National Health and Poverty Data Released Showing Little Change
Olivia Sourivong | October 1, 2026
In September 2026, the U.S. Census Bureau released data for the 2025 calendar year, including for income, poverty, and health indicators throughout the United States. Overall, the national data show little change in the number of children going without health insurance while also noting a steady decline in the number of kids living in poverty.
Child poverty under the official measure fell to a historic low in 2025. But behind those numbers, Kansas has already seen thousands of fewer children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, and fewer families receiving SNAP, which helps relieve financial pressure on struggling parents. Below, we look at what the 2025 numbers show and what to watch as federal changes cascade down to everyday.
What’s the New Data Release by the U.S. Census Bureau?
Since 1947, the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) has collected valuable and well-respected data on health care coverage, income, workforce participation, public program participation, and other economic factors. Most notably, this data is the nation’s only source that collects data for the Official Poverty Measure, Supplemental Poverty Measure, and national health insurance coverage.
The one-year American Community Survey is typically released alongside the ASEC data, but that dataset has been delayed indefinitely due to some new methodology protections enacted by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Unlike the American Community Survey, which uses self-response methods through mailed questionnaires, the U.S. Census Bureau collects ASEC data by conducting interviews through a computer-assisted telephone interview system. The CPS ASEC’s questions on income and other economic sources are much more detailed and provide a more comprehensive image of an individual’s or household's income sources.
Because the American Community Survey has a significantly larger sample size than the CPS ASEC data, it is able to provide more detail and state-level data. But with that data being on hold with no known revised release date, advocates must look to the CPS ASEC data and determine what insights can be gleaned at a national level.
Health Coverage Shows Little Change from 2024
Nationally, the number of individuals who went uninsured showed little change from the prior year, with 7.9% of Americans in 2025 going uninsured compared to 8.0% in 2024. In that same time period, the uninsured rate for children under the age of 19 ticked down to 5.8% (2025) from 6.1% (2024).
Between 2018 and 2025, the lowest point for the uninsured population among children under 19 was in 2021 when federal policies were enacted to temporarily provide Medicaid coverage protections under the Public Health Emergency.
The new data also continue to show disparities in health insurance coverage across different racial and ethnic groups. For instance, in 2025, 6.0% of Black children and 9.4% of Hispanic children were uninsured, while white and Asian children went uninsured at much lower rates (4.2% and 3.6%, respectively).
There are also significant geographic differences in child uninsured rates. The Western region’s child uninsured rates were at 5.5%, which is an increase of 1.1 percentage points. However, the South region still continued to have the highest child uninsured rate at 8.0%, even though it dropped by about 0.4 percentage points. The Midwest region experienced a slight drop to 4.5% in 2025 from 4.8% in 2024.
But even with the decline in uninsured children, the number of children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP has shown a sharp decrease from 2025 into the first half of 2026, according to the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF). As of July 2026, Georgetown CCF’s Medicaid and CHIP enrollment tracker reports nearly 2.5 million fewer children who were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP than in January 2025.
As CCF notes in their analysis, "… there are some important reasons to think these numbers may not be telling a complete story. First, the CPS child uninsured rate only counts children as uninsured if they lacked coverage for the entire calendar year, so children who were disenrolled from Medicaid during the year, for example, are not included in that figure. The CPS sample size is also much smaller than that of the ACS, about 100,000 addresses in the CPS compared to 3 million in the ACS."
In Kansas, from 2024 to 2025, Medicaid child enrollment decreased by 4,421, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment saw an increase of 1,844 children. While Kansas children could have moved from public health insurance to private insurance or the ACA Marketplace, the decline in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment remains significant. With federal changes under H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” scheduled to take effect in 2027, health coverage for both children and adults will continue to be an important issue to monitor.
Official Poverty Measure Shows Steady Decline
In 2025, the official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% in 2025. This percentage equates to 34.5 million people across the country in poverty in 2025. For children, the official poverty rate fell to 13.4%.
The official poverty measure (OPM) defines poverty using pretax income and compares that to the national poverty threshold. The steady decline in the official poverty rate could partly reflect increases in median household income. In 2025, median family household income was $87,460, up from $85,210 in 2024. Median income increased by 3.0% for white households, 2.9% for non-Hispanic white households, and 4.8% for Black households. However, median income did not change significantly for Asian or Hispanic households.
Supplemental Poverty Measure Shows the Impact of Antipoverty Programs
The Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is another way to give a fuller picture of individuals living in poverty. While the OPM only looks at household income before taxes, the SPM accounts for the effects of government benefits (like SNAP or Medicaid) and other necessary expenses (like taxes and medical expenses).
Both measures are important to use when understanding poverty. However, the SPM provides supplemental information that helps us better understand the factors that impact a family experiencing poverty.
In 2025, the SPM was 13.1% for all ages and 13.4% for children, which isn’t a significant change over the past few years.
The lowest SPM for children occurred in 2021 when it was 5.2%. This was largely due to stimulus payments and expansions of programs like SNAP and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The Child Tax Credit alone lifted 5.3 million people out of poverty in 2021, including 2.9 million children. Since then, the child SPM has increased to pre-COVID levels, but has remained relatively stable since 2023.
Considering the additional context provided by the SPM, the data show the impact of several public programs and their ability to keep otherwise struggling individuals afloat.
For the nation, Social Security proved to be the largest antipoverty program, lifting 28.8 million people out of poverty in 2025. For children specifically, refundable tax credits (3.3 million), the Earned Income Tax Credit (2.1 million children), and SNAP (1.2 million children) lifted millions of kids across the country out of poverty.
On the other hand, medical expenses were the largest factor that pushed 7.7 million, including 1.4 million children into poverty.
What Does the 2025 Data Mean for Kansas?
Most national trends didn’t shift much for uninsured children or kids living in poverty. While relatively unchanged from 2024 to 2025, understanding the trend of these indicators over time will be helpful for interpreting how policy impacts children’s well-being. For instance, 2021 was a significant year when poverty and uninsured rates reached historic lows because of enhanced federal policies that supported families during the pandemic.
Looking ahead, 2025 provides an important baseline for understanding how these indicators may change as recent federal policies cascade down to Kansas families. While programs like SNAP have been shown to help lift children out of poverty, where will the Supplemental Poverty Measure be next year? As of August 2026, Kansas has seen around 41,000, including nearly 18,000 children, lose SNAP since federal changes were passed in July 2025.
These changes are especially important to monitor alongside other measures of family well-being. Looking at poverty and health insurance data alongside nutrition and hunger data provide a more complete picture of the economic conditions children and families are facing in Kansas and across the country.
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